Reform, Conservative rabbis: Step up gun control

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Reform and Conservative rabbinical leaders called for increased gun controls in the wake of a spate of shootings.

"Our tradition teaches: ‘Do not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor’ (Leviticus 19:16)," said a statement Thursday issued by Rabbi Julie Schonfeld, the executive vice president of the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly. "As people of faith, the Rabbinical Assembly unequivocally calls upon lawmakers to take all available measures, to ensure the safety of the public to limit the availability of guns and the permissibility of their concealment."

A statement the same day by Rabbi David Saperstein, the director of Reform’s Religious Action Center, noted the shooting attack Wednesday by a man on the Family Research Council, in which a guard was injured, and alluded to shootings this summer at a cinema in Colorado and a Sikh Temple in Wisconsin that have claimed 18 lives.

"Guns are too pervasive in our society and too easily obtained by those with mental illness, nefarious goals – or both," Saperstein said. "Abiding by the principles of the Constitution need not be incompatible with sensible gun control."

Saperstein’s statement also noted increasingly vicious political rhetoric as an element; the FRC attacker reportedly opposed the group’s opposition to gay marriage, and the Wisconsin shooter was a white supremacist.

"This trend of violence threatens us all and violates the values of respect for others that must be paramount in American civic and political life," he said.